The
ever-increasing number of on-chip transistors are resulting in power
consumption at unprecedented levels especially in embedded applications.
High power consumption levels both reduce battery life and increase
packaging cost in portable and wireless systems.

The
PowerTap project’s key goals are to integrate hardware and software mechanisms
and policies to offer system-wide energy/power management in a wide spectrum
of computer products from embedded and portable systems to desktops and
servers. At the core of PowerTap’s efforts are a power-aware OS to
implement power-aware resource allocation and scheduling policies, and
architectural/hardware mechanisms in system devices to save energy/power.